recap at 5:00 p.m. eastern on washington today. you can also hear audio of the five networks sunday public affairs programs beginning sundays at noon eastern. c-span radio on audionow call 202-626-8888. long distance or phone charges may apply. next on american history tv a ri kelman out university of california-davis discusses the sand creek massacre. november 29th, 1864, attack of u.s. army troops on a cheyenne and arapaho indian village in colorado territory. this is from the gettiesburg college war ins tult annual summer conference taking place in june. it's about an hour. [ applause ] >> thanks very much for that

very kind introduction. thanks to all of you for your you patience in advance. you i woker up this morning quite nervous. more nervous than i often am u when i'm going to be giving a talk and i think i noticed yesterday a number of you are teachers. is that right? yes? thank you.of i appreciate that. i can just look at kevin if i need. kevin, you teach, right? in addition to blogging.er, in sorry, pete. blo and sogg you're used to being in front of unruly crowds.g and you may also have some experience with a particularly nerve wracking speaking engagement. one of those engagements wrote you're not quite sure where the subject matter of your talk fits with the event at hand. and then adding to that you learn that perhaps, i don't know, c-span is going to broadcast your talk live on television because, hey you know, live television.ppen

this stills, happens apparently. but if you've done any public ave done speaking, you also know that you moment where a that sense of real calm settles over you. i know that pete knows that because i've now watched him speak beautifully a number of times in the past couple of days. i just want to let you know, e this's not happening to me right now. and so without further ado. as many of you may know on november 29th, 1864, approximately 700 troops from the 1st and 3rd colorado regiments led by colonel john shifington attacked an encampment in a bend of sand creek in southeastern colorado ho territory. some 900y native people who believed they had recently made peace with white authorities fled up the dry creek bed that omewhere morning.0 the onslaught left somewhere

between 150 and maybe as many asthe ove 225 of them dead. the overwhelming majority of whom were women children or the elderly. shifington's surviving troops combed the field for what one of them called trophies, scalps fingers and the genitalia of victims and then burned the village before returning to denver colorado where they co were greeted aslo heroes.were in the weeks after sand creek, the men exhibited their plunder at a downtown theater. nearly a century and a half later on april 28th, 2007, the down national park service opened its 391st unit, the sand creek massacre national historic site. the ceremony that day was equal ma parts celebration and memorial service. after drum groups went silent a cheyenne chief had a prayer and then the colorado governor at s,

the time leaders of four native american tribes local politicians and park service officials all shared their views of what the historic site might accomplish in the coming years.timist the speakers for the most part struck an optimistic pose. the site, they said, honored the they honor of the sand creek victims it promised long-deferred healing, that was a word used regularly, long-deferred healing to the affected tribes and it also offered a blueprint for or future cooperation between the t native americans and federal authorities. collective remembrance, they indicated, if it was situated in a sufficiently sacred place, could heal a rift cut by violence between cultures. now, i think probably most of you already know this, but rials memorials arear always shaped by politic politics. contemporary concerns inflect how history is presented at such places because memorial designers look to the present that.

and the future as well as the past when they do their work. nati this is especially true of national historic sites. hav federal officials have long viewed commemoration as k a kind of of patriotic alchamey for unity by appealing to shared perceptions of the past.ntent. this is about as good as it gets for civil war content. i'm kidding. you can take for example's presidentfi lincoln's first inaugural address. the president suggested if americans would pay heed h to, quote, the mystic cords of memory from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hert stone across the nation end quote, the cords would quuns again quote, swell the chorus of the union. end quote. at sites around the united nts states sentiments like en president lincolns, sentiments of events abiding faith in the nationalizing power of faith arerve

the carved into stone. the monuments are supposed to serve the nation's interest by linking together its peoples by an also legitimating federal authority out of common goes, memories, the theory goes e americans have and will continue to forge common identities. memories of sand creek speakers he at the opening ceremony suggested would play this role ng vis allowingit visitors to the national historic site to heal deep wounds. the justification for collective remembrance in the united states in recent years from the murray building in oklahoma city to wer the 9/11 memorial in lower manhattan has often rested on a mise. similar premise. the idea is that these memorialsomfort s will comfort stricken ing communities and also a grieving nation. that the sand creek site was going to be the first unit in the national park system to ch fed label aner event in which federal troops had killed native people

a massacre promised to deepen its utility in this regard. i by remembering shifington's victims and the country's history of racial violence visitors would supposedly be able to transcend their own prenlgss. this paltive vision, a vision again, predicated on the ideas that memorials allow people to heal, this vision sufficient sed mo fused most of the speeches early in the ceremony. but as some of you may know or nd as you may already have a sense, sand creek is a very unlikely source for these sorts of utopian sentiments.ces, and so, dissenting voices, those of the native people lly, especially, who participated in the memorialization process rejected what they saw as a hollow offer of painless reconciliation. this is eugene little coyote, the chairman in the northern cheyenne tribe and feared it might be a stalking horse for anl gove olderrn project for the federal tribal

government's plongstanding effort to strip tribal peoples of the distinctive identities. and so, rather than accepting ting the site t as a symbol of federal power, they portrayed the memorial as determination.ce and other participants at the opening ceremony expressed suspicions for a host of additional reasons because the lar on federal government was unpopular on colorado's eastern plains especially when it insinuated itself in a local land use dispute, because of charges of t mari so-called political correctness hoveringly over maryland news grave at the time eastern colorado's eastern ev representative called at revisionism and because of a gnawing sense that the word massacre somehow indicted the united states army. in the wake of the september rev 11th attacks with the nation that embroiled in two wars overseas sot observers believed in 2007

that a memorial that questioned the military's rectitude in any way necessarily flirted with anti-americanism. over the next half hour or so, the i'm going to suggest that the controversies in 2007 echoed a f century and a half's wrangling over sand creek's memory pivoting on a series of thorny a questions. first of all who's culpable for the bloodshed at sand creek? betteras understood adds a battle elatio or massacre andns what was the th relationship of politics and violence on the american border lands? and also between the process of continental expansion and the pansio twon wars, the civil war and the plains indian wars spawned by that process. that process of expansion.eek site when the sand creek site sponsors tried to answer these questions, they learned that the massacre remained history front in an ongoing culture war. collective remembrance it turned out could tear scabs from old

wounds as heal them and so while each new fight over american memory highlights the challenge of agreeing on a single historical narrative within the confines of a society like the united states, the case of sand creek proved unusually complicated, especially so because competing stories of the h massacre itself haunted the memorialization process.ries alo the first of those stories belonged to a methodist minister and an abolitionist of john shivington. he saw the violence as a noble part of civilizing the american west and preserving the union. indeed, he saw those two ng processes as inextricably intertwined and used the gallons of blood along sand creek's banks to depict a master stroke. on november 29th, 1864 in the afternoon with cheyenne and his arapaho arapaho corpses still cooling

nearby that his men attacked an indian village, quote brisling with 1,000 warriors. he already at this time began a eratin process ofg exaggerating the accomplishments of his troops. he went on to say that his men killed several chiefs and hundreds of their followers.ld later he would later on increase that number to 500 and ultimately to 600 or 700. l he then justified the attack by tified pointing to department ri dagss he said was committed by the fallen enemy at sand creek. his men hasad claimed -- his men he claimed had whipped, quote, savages, end quote, guilty of ting b desecrating white bodies. this was an outrage he indicated surely demanded a quick reprisal dealt by a sure hand. for the remainder of hi life john shifington said that sand creek was a glorious battle. he made that argument in large arge measure by pointing to the bloodshed civil war context and war to the settlers remains he claimed his men had recovered ettler

there. in spring in1865, for example, he to testified to federal investigators looking into sand e creek, quote, rebel emissaries sent among the indians to incite them, end quote. what he was saying is white coloradoans facing peril the union facing peril from the reek. indians that his men killed at nt to sand creek and pointed to the dakota upriseing in minnesota. the decision to fight with the confederacy and a cheyenne warrior, a man of george bent, had served as the south's agent in the run-up to sand creek o figh promising colorado's native american peoples that quote with the great father at washington having all he could do to fight the children of the south the indians could regain their country. end quote. in this way john shivington ene made the victims at sand creek enemies not just of white oodshe settlers id n colorado, but of the ju union morest broadly. the bloodshed then game a triumph not just in the indian

wars but also of the civil war. finally, in 1883 nearing the end of his life, he spoke publicly for the last time about sand creek. he t addressed a colorado heritage. organization at its annual banquet. he remained very popular in colorado until he died. with he addressed this heritage organization and concluded the remarks, i believe the last nd words he said on the subject of sand creek quote i stand by sand creek. a man of captain silas sole did not. prior to h arriving in colorado four years before the massacre, sole lived in bleeding, kansas, where as asigh lie of john brown he was an abolitionist jay fight it hawker. he refused to commit the troops er under him to the fight at sand creek and he later wrote to a friend of his, a former norabl commander, nede winecoop he saidhat nati it sullied the fight for the

union and also the process of settling the west. and that native and not white bodies desecrated there. world o soule depicted a world of civilized indians and savage whites cataloged the terrible bodies cruelties visited upon the sand creek dead. and the bodies of men, women and children he said had all been hacked apart.e woul he wrote to winecoop quote they d that he would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there.+++tsda federal

official looking into sand creek wrote " the barber is

in the slavery has come unaided assassination of mr. lincoln. the barbarism of centrica is commented in the assassination of captain soule,' this was a statement that foreshadowed some abolitionists decision to gravitate toward the indian reform movement in the years after the passage of the 13th amendment. three federal indian reform movement in the years after the passage of the that s 13than amendment. them c three federal investigations eventually determined that sand creek had been a bad act. one of them went so far to call it a massacre but john findings shivington and others refused to accept the findings an enso because sand creek represented for y such an eaunsettled chapter in the region's history the fight over its memory continued for years hun afterward. in em1879, for example author helen hunt jackson embraced the lett cause of indian reform. in letters to newspapers around the united states, she drew on silas soule's recollections of sand krik.

he used the massacre as a cudul. troo she said they were peaceful and the troops desecrated the dead. wil her charges wrangled this man, a man named william biers and editor of the denver rocky reek mountain new hsad in 1864 and dismissed claims that sand creek had been a massacre. in 1879, biers ignored the ongoing indian wars. he replied to jackson that sand creek had actually pacified the buy p plains tribesre rather than and spurring them to more violence and said jackson originally fromssibly u new england and a woman to boot couldn't possibly understand the violence at sand creek.fe he possessed a feat sensibility sensibilities out of place. helen hunt jackson gave as good re as she got and rebutted the e bloo sexism andds regionalism with eir patriotic nationalism.

federal troops might better haveust spent their time fighting racted confederates. sand creek inar e this view hadn't th just been a massacre wu detrablgted from the union war effort. as jackson engaged in this printt the war with biers, she worked on a ting i book about the nation's history of mistreating its indigenous an people. published in 1881, argued only tes be by overhauling federal indian policy could the united states be redeemed in the eyes of god w. the war, the red river war st and the great sioux war and then known as the custer massacre at the lirtd l big horn just over, embr some officials in the department of the interior were primed to embrace helen hunt jackson's calls for reform. but even as the climate surrounding federal tribal relations was shiftding d adhere shivington's perspective still had adherence in the west. news including editors at the gunnison democrat and jackson worked on century of dishonest called for quote, another sand

creek, end quote to wipe out thet, utes in the wake of another massacre. infuriate infuriated, george bent named william bent an owl woman cheyenne wife weighed in on the history of sand creek. john shivington was an eager perpetrator and silas soule was a reluctantvi witness. shown here with his wife magpie was a survivor. wounded he fought for years to keep the memory of the massacre alive. around the turn of the 20th ed ove century, frederickr jackson turner speaking in chicago at the world's fair fretted over ing the closing of the frontier. conservationists warned of the impending ickes tix of the bison and native peoples that depended on them for survival and readers consumed piles of novels of cowboys and indians.

the west in popular culture and public policy stood at the center of debates about the had no future of the united states and george bent worried that native americans had no voice in these conversations. he begannn relatting tribal history to george bird granelle. also to james mooney, a renowned t smithsonian ephnographer and to george hyde a relatively obscure historian and obscure enough i have no picture of him. i apologize for that. i 'm keeping him obscure.de omp tigs between historians. in 1906, george bent and george hyde published together six articles in a magazine called s the frontier. in those articles, they debunked john shivington's story of sand tec creek. although bent acknowledged as shivington charged in 1865 that he bent had fought with the confederacy, he served in ta

sterling crisis first missouri cavalry andn i mocked the men in colorado who talked about rebel plots to ally with the region's indians, end quote. the comanches he noted were foes of texas and the arapahos and shy queencheyennes had no incentive to fight with the south. turning to the massacre, bent relayed details of the betrayal of american and white flags oops flying over black kettle's lodge underst and of the colorado troops butchery. bent understood the civil war as a war of tng imperialism rather than liberation. and he concluded that shivington wrought with sand creek the thing he claimed to have fly ex prevented. a conflict that threatened if only briefly expansion into the west. not surprisingly, the essays outraged john shivington's surviving member. major jacob downing resented the

charge of a massacre. thatsome their actions somehow . dishonored their service and that an indian had dared to sponde suggest that a white man might be he duncivilized. downing responded to george bent, in the denver times labeling himl, a hal a cut throat and a thief, a liar and scoundrel but worst of all a half breed. end quote. he then turned his attention to war imbedding shivington's stories into a civil war narrative that , they werena constructing around the united states at the time. capit work that culminated in denver with the unveiling of a memorialnt fea on thetu state capitol steps in 1909. the monument featured a plaque on the base cataloging battles and engagements in coloradoans fought during the war. sand creek was among them.ivil w your lower right. with veterans of the civil war nearing the end of their lives campaigns to shape how future generations would remember the conflict swept the united states.docu archives at the timeme acquired monume

documentnt collections, authors published histories and cities unveiled monuments and memorials. as david blight,ff of course, and int other skoen lors argued in recent years, the efforts were often intended to inspire onlookerless to 'em grace a reconciliationist narrative of the war. carrie janning is here. i apologize. a he reic story of which soldiers fought s bravery and well. the rootsl causes struggles over the the fate of slavely and in th definitions of citizenship and e over the right to shape an emerging american empire in the orth transmississippi west could and indeed should be set aside in service of an ammicible reunion of forth and south. in short, upholding patriotic f amnesia. stewardsgo of the civil war's emerg memory in colorado realized if the state was going to be included in this emerging civil war story, sand creek was going

to have to be remembered as a battle or an engagement. at the statue's dedication then organizered stitched together unity and pride. they seamlessly integrated marchi visions ofng empire and military. a military band balanced the dix spirit of marching through georgia with the lost cause nostalgia of dixie. one speaker invoked the spirit of reconciliation suggesting quote, we'll all americans today and we all glory in one flag and one country, end quote.n then general irving hale with fame in the spanish-american army celebrated the civil war or making freedom universal for all americans, end quote. am the remarks ignored the impact on native peoples including the ssacre arapahos and cheyenne. the sponsors smoothed away the y in bro massacre's rough edges and cast john shivington's stories of the tragedy in bronze.

less than half a century later, coloradoans working against a very different political k backdrop reversed course. the they began segregating mem ris of sabd creek from the civil war and associating the bloodshed exclusively with west ward ric ma expansion. august 6rkth, 1950, the state unveiled two historic markers.overlo the first of those a marble slab sat on a rise overlooking the massacre site. for the rest of my talk i'm t going to ask that you keep this image in the back of your mind and when i refer to the monument overlook and i'll do so a number of additional times, this what i'm talking about. that rise there that you see in the distance behind those trees that's the monument overlook at the sand creek site.hn that marker echoed john shivington. it read sand creek battleground. as you can see here.al socie the second marker, an on lising " s sponsored by the state historic

society included the mixed labele message, d quote sand creek battle or massacre end quote. and labeled the bloodshed quote, a regrettable tragedy of the conquest of the west.ical soc end quote. this was an interpretation born of the need to placate g historicalto society donors and local people and didn't relish they had a massacre site in the background. le roy haffin colorado's at the e time chief historian and noted er some called it a battle and he des others labeled it a msz kerr end quote. he then ducked the fight over tragic e naming. he described throewt violence as, quote, a tragic engagement, an outgrowth of conflict, excuse me contact between the incompatible cultures of red and white men. end quote n. this way, he alliedt. responsibility for sand creek and divorced the massacre from the civil war context. this made good sense at the for

start of the cold war. for more than a decade, federal by authorities drumd up support for internationalism. encouraging americans com to recall the civil war as an emblem of the nation's commitment its ironclad commitment to freedom.not sand creek bathed in unambiguous -- cult light didn't go with the good war. by the 1960s, more changes in the nation's cultural and activ political climate had another apprisal of sand creek. i a group of activistnds formed to tak a.i.m. ande in 1969 some of that organization organization's members look over overal ka trad island signals the arrival of what was called week b redef power.cupati on theon national stage. a week before the alcatraz occupation a journalist named seymour seymour hearse broke the story.

and in 1970 with "bury my heart at wounded knee" the civil he so- rights movement hadca views and scinat many white americansed part of the so-called new age were ronted fascinated by traditional cultures and americans had once again confronted the capacity of u.s. soldiers, sometimes to ook fo slaughter innocent civilians. brown's book thus found an audience eager to learn more about native peoples and keen in some instances to embrace critiques of american militaryism and racism. for much of his adult life d. ight h brown worked at the university of illinois library. at night he wrote books.historic can you imagine someone more heroic as a historian and ooks librarian librarian? doesn't get better than that. atea night dr. brown wrote books including a history of the american west conquest through the eyes of the tribal peoples. of his voice brown said, quote,

i'm a very old indian and remembering the past.ative thosear memories included sand creek for which brown adopted anng on interpretive frame similar ttho soule's and bent's.lage focusing on the white and american flags flying over black kettle's village. falling in a hail of bullets while singing the death song. and on shivington's men slicing genitalia from their victims. professional historians greeted the publication of "bury my heart at wounded knee" with skepticism and bordered on contempt.olarly d. brown they said had askewed scholarly balance.ct. he hadn't interrogated the sources. distorted evidence and made errors of fact.ork reviewers outside the academy escribed though heaped praise on brown. "the new york times" described the book as, quote, both impossible to read and impossible to put down.more t end haquote.york t the publicim agreed. the book spent more than a year

on the "the new york times" best-seller list and has since's sold more than 5 million copies. that's even better than pete's it als books have odone, i think.cholar it also had a huge influence on readers and a rising generation scholars that self identified asd we all new western historians. paul hutten, for example said k was we went to bed thinking about er tho the indian wars and indians one way and then never thought the same way again. end quote. "bury my heart at wounded site. knee's" impact is still felt in 1978 with the sand creek of s national historic site and even then after nearly a century and a half of struggles over the massacre's memory the park service learned that enduring questions surrounding the violence remained unanswered.ning f in or1998, the park service began planning for this site.uard. and it discovered that there was

a new question that caught it off guard. i where,n precisely, had sand creek taken place? it turned out in 1998 before it was memorialized it had to be found. the search that ensued became storic contentious when a disagreements over how to interpret the ypical historical record dpided the people looking for site. december sen dants of the victims typically based their understanding of the episode's history and geography on what al his theyto described as traditional tribal methods, also on oral histories and on written records including stories and map pros deuced by george bent around the de turn of the 20'd century. for decades, the sand creek descendants had used george bent's maps and writings as a guide. they had madeie pilgrimages to a spot near the monument overlook don' and performed sacred ceremonies and honored their ancestors and i don't think i should leave the podium because i'm being fimlmed he

cre and if you lookek at the bend you're seeing in the slide, the monument overlook is just below the creek and i'll give you a better sense of this in a moment.lling fi the park service by contrast tried to solve the mist write of tr the killing field's location looking at other materials, con especially records produced by troops who had fought as sand samuel creek and then by consulting a map penned by a soldier named si samuel bonsal that visited the sherm site after the massacre with sherman and then in charge of the united states forces in the west.y this was in 1869. using the map mps officials overl believed theyoo pinpointed black kettle's village less than a mile from the overlook. you can see the lower center it ad says shivington's massacre. they looked at this and they again thought that they had found -- pinpointed the exact location of black kettle's

village located less than a mile upstream from the monument overlook. the park service then did an archaeological investigation and unearthed a huge band of artifacts which seemed to confirm this hypothesis f. you ting look at this map, you can see i - think it says existing marker.in that's the monument overlook. you can see just a very, very few dots nestled in that bend of sand creek and then if you move up the creek about three fifths of a mile or so you can see a number of dots including the plume of artifacts that the park service unearthed. many of the descendants were outraged, though by these discoveries. outraged especially because the mps seemed to be -- rather than inted its victims. they pointed back to george bent's maps insisting that bent a cheyenne survivor clearly placed black kettle's village inside a crook of sand creek.

and so, if you look at number 2 here, and then if you look at this close-up of the key, you n it can see black p kettle's camp thathe cre it clearly placed black kettle's camp inside this crook of the la creek. they thenck produced their own mapere th of the massacre site including black kettle's village and located precisely where they believe george bent placed it a century earlier and two different maps. one is the national park service's map. the other is a map produced by the northern cheyenne, the k southern cheyenne and the southern arapaho descendants of sand creek's victims. the park service was caught off guard by this dispute over competing cartographies and had paciou a compromise.s a site with boundaries that were and are capacious enough for all of the different interpretations of exactly where sand creek happened. so again is if you could look at

this map you will see that the monument overlook is included were f withinou the park as is that site f addi further upstreamti where the artifacts were found. after a number of twists and at sec turns, incloouding a casino cut th corporation stepping in to broker a deal, the park service was ready to cut the ribbon on the site. all of which leads back to april 28 sth, 2007 whether the first lab unit of the national park system to label american soldiers as perpetrators rather than heroes or victims opened its doors.uld be although the site's name answered the question of what sand creek would be called, how to interpret the massacre tes remained unresolved. ironically as the united states celebrates the civil war ses question thecentennial the name challenges visitors not because that they're asked anew whether the een bloodshed was a battle or a name. massacre but because that question seems to have been

answered by the park's name. the stories of americans tell live. themselves about the civil war suggests that president lincoln died so that the united states might live. redeemed for having liberated the south slaves out of a ly withi bloodshed, the nation was reborn. it's a resurrection story that y, we fits neatly within christian narratives. in this way we trance figure the civil war's history of violence icted into virtue and the tragedy into triumph but sand creek depicted as a massacre bucks the we typ redemptive currents that run through most national historic ma sites.rk we typically favor neat depictions of history marked by steady progress, punk waited by . the occasional righteous war fork site often chaotic and frack churled past. the sand creek site, though, reminds visitors as much as they might wishl that theca history proceeded in regimented fashion,

the past can't be so easily m drilled to fall into line. the massacre story indicts and pi heroes cast. citizen soldiers.s causes union officials. and reflects a darker vision of the civil war's causes and -- consequences. expansion into the american west touched off the war thatsl destroyed slavery, it's true, s but also other wars with the plains tribes that left behind no simple lessons for federal commentators that may be bending the memory. they're grappling on how to interpret sand creek, doubt on the enduring notion that the united states enjoys a special destiny as an exceptional nation visitor favored by god. very the question ofdi whether visitors to the sand creek site are readyhomela to broach these sorts of very difficult topics to reassess their homeland's character and perhaps destiny remains unanswered. for in the end thist storyhi of alleab

memorializing sand creekle suggests that history and memory are both malleable if not always biddable and that the people of t the united states are sohe various commo that they shouldn't ben expected to share a single tale of a cou common past.plclas sometimes our stories complimentrg one another.e. sometimes they clash.e sometimeser that intersect.more sometimes they diverge. story of sand creek suggest that is the civil war more broadly midwifed in president clin con's re words a new birth of freedom andbjugatio delivered the indian wars, a moment of national redemption for some and disposition for others. that the civil war was s bother a war of liberation and also of empire. the park service and tribal descendants are never going to the h concur on every element of sand creek's interpretation but they may agree that the historic site should challenge visitors to grapple with competing narratives of u.s. history. to struggle with how the past is shot through with ironies. if that happens, the massacre i

suggest in my book, this is the product placement portion of the the talk, if that happens, the massacre will no longer be [app misplaced in the landscape of national memory. thank you very much. [ applause ] i can just go ahead -- >> i can just go ahead?d made >> ayes. right around 1971, hollywood b made a movie about this.as it was called "soldier blue."all, t >> yep. >> and as i recall, the movie showed that the native americans didn't have any weapons. so, it wasn't really a battle m then. i mean i'm under the impressionroci that it wasou a massacre. but -- and they did some atrocious things and one of the op

doi soldiersng approached the colonel and said to him, you need to stop doing this. you need to not allow this to happen when they were doing these things to the bodies and everything. and the colonel said to the p soldier, you're insane. so the guy that was trying to stop this atrocity was called insane. but anyway one of the things that i was w wondering about is how many women were killed? how many children were killed?ressio and how many men weren killed? i was under the impression there that there weren't very many men there in the first place. thank you. >> sure. first of all, soldier blue is part of this sort of cultural constellation in the early 1970s, little big men, soldier blue bury my heart at wounded knee. a number of other texts as y much historians like to say that come c out all of which are very very

much a by-product of critiques for re of the war inap vietnam. and which allows for reappraisal of the indian wars. and so soldier blue i think of as being very very much of a piece with d. brown's work. as to the question of how many ct women and children were killed there, we don't have exact to t numbers.y. to the best of -- i'm going to be very clear here. tha not to thet best of my ability, ie should stop and say i'm by no means the leading authority on the massacre itself. i write about the way that this e mass event was remembered and so i orians draw on other people when i talk about the msz kerr. but the historians of the massacre itself as i said at they top of the tuck they think somewhere between 150 maybe as many as 225 or 250 native , someth americans were killed at sand creek. of those something like 90% probably were women and ack ke

children. a couple of reasons for that. most important of which is that most of the men in black kettle's camp were out hunting. the people in this camp they genuinely believed that they e ca were part of a peace camp. this camp was being protected byhought t federal soldiers. they thought they had nothing to th fear in that moment and so warriors were away at the time of the attack. and so, there just weren't very many men in the camp which accounts for why so few of them were killed. that said one other point very, very quickly.er point the native people there were armed. they weren't particularly well ell ar armed but they were armed. they did fight. shivington lost somewhere maybe between a dozen and two dozen of his men, so it was -- it was a very, very violent encounter that lasted the better part of a day and that ran across about six miles. it was a running engagement. so it was a pretty grim scene.

can i go back and forth? >> could you just talk about the -- the washatol then? how's the park service going to interpret which i know that's if y civil war connection because of it custer but you look at the battle and how it was fought, it was very similar. you'd even say that custer's o the approach to the washetol is similar to shivington's and similar to the approach to - little big- horn. everybody says custer was mass kerred running into too many indians, right? at the washetol and sand creek, it was the other way around so what is the park service now doing about that?e >> washetol is an extraordinarily controversial site for a>> vie rity of different reasons but especially because it's beend atrou labeled a battlefield. the tribal descendants believe it, - atoo, is a massacre site.ory is f the his tore og if i on the the

washetol is i would say far more mixed than it is about sand creek. the overwhelming majority of there historians now call sand creek ait massacre. there are some who still insist was a that it was a battle. that's really not true of the as she washetol. the washetol is a much more complyicated affair.hit as you probably know black kettle who survived sand creek sort of wandered in the wilderness you might say. i'm speaking metaphorically now for several years. withi his reputation suffered very badly within the cheyenne o community or communities, f really, because of sand creek and then tragically he was killed, he remained a peacemaker but he was killed at the washetol and that's a large part of the reason that the southern cheyennes especially would like the washetol reinterpreted as a massacre site but at least for now that's not happening. >> incotwo-part question really

quickly. how did the lincoln administration native american politics factor into sand creek massacre? two, with the establishment of the sand creek historic site, what's the future of nps interpreting other massacres not really native american but other massacres and other tragedies that occurred in the united states? >> those are really good qu questions but they're not reallyaugh quick.te >> sorry! >> so the first part how does -- fe federalde indian policy figure into sand creek,. i'm writing a book about that right now. i mean, that's a really s obnoxious historian's answer, right? you have to read the next book bly wi and probably won'tll come out for ten years because i'm really slow but i'll give you the very very short answer and just say , as i that i think that the civil war

as i indicated in the talk was both -- or i should say became ion both a war of liberation but of emerged from the get-go as a war of empire. the 1860 election which tends to be remembered popularly and i hi think also to some extent by historians as an election fought over the fate of slavely was an election that wasin fought over e ques the fate of theti slavery in the sl american west. the question was whether or not in the slavery would move into territory that had been conquered in the united states mexican war and what happens is that you've got or what d happened -- i'm going to speak in the past tense, what happened was that tlmp two competing visions for how to settle the west and so the 1860 election was in addition to a kind of referendum on the fate of slavery. it was also a revferendum on ht -- american empire. nobody thought or i shouldn't very f

say nobody. very, very few people in the s american electorate in 1860 t. believed that the united states g to d shouldn't move into the west. the question was, how was it going to do that? the republican party of coursecentrali win it is 1860 election and so you have a centralized vision of american empire which will be driven by the pacific railroad act, by the homestead act all of which are passed in the 1862 -- second congress in 1862? i'm looking at a civil war historian now. and so something like sand creek or the dakota uprising or the navajo's long walk, a number of other episodes, all of these emerge out of the move into the e west. because that move is going to al collide withre the people who already live there.k now your second question about what does sand creek mean for the park service interpreting memorializing additional massacres, honestly that's quicker because i don't know.

i can tell you that if you read the book and again totally obnoxious answer i apologize you should buy like eight copies, though, but if you read the book, what you'll discover will d is that the park service went in to the effort to memorialize wit sand creek with extraordinarily high hopes that this was going to be an opportunity to burnish the park service's multicultural credentials, the reach out to native american communities, to in interpret more native american sites. but the process was really very, very difficult.pe andop a number of people in the nps ended up feeling like, boy, i real we made a lot more enemies than we made friends and i don't know what will come of it. i really don't.maryla >> dennis graham haguerstown maryland. yomeunt mentioned the discrepe pay archa sy of where the village was located. was there any archaeological c

excavation where the descendants of the victims claimed it was that might prove their point? >> yes., the archaeological excavationsarch take place up and down and the creek and other areas, as well. there were four or five different spots where the park service dug. one of those was right in the crook of the bend. it's -- the explanation that the landowner who held the property at that spot, the monument overlook and the north side of the creek of sand creek, the explanation for -- that he gave for why there were no artifacts discovered there was that through the years collectors had come through that location which people in the county in southeastern colorado understoodaditio to be the proper sand creek site also called the traditional site

and that they had picked that site clean over the course of decades. he pointed especially to a number of dust bowl years in the 1950s when most of thetopsoil r blew away and his father -- r, i father or grandfather i forget t right now -- had owned that property and the -- and literally hundreds of artifacts he said, had just been exposed and people had come through and collected them by the wagonload.ble defe and so that was his explanation. and the tribal descendents believed that that was accurate d in t for whyha there were so few artifacts still found in that th almos location. but the dig cameg in up with almost nothing in that precise spot. boo i'm not going to reveal to you the end of the book because it's got kind of a surprise ending. but there ends up being an explanation for why all of thesebut it theories may be true. but it's a little convoluted for right now.

>> this is kind of a memory onduct question. so when you talked about the soldiers' conduct post-battle how much of that actually makes a difference in how we remember as a battle versus a massacre? >> it's a really good question and not as easy to answer as i stop thought, so i'm not going to be glib. what i'll say is that the main or the -- sort of the most s of t eminent historians of the plains indian wars, especially bob utley, now look back on sand look creek and they sayba this was a massacre because it was a k, surprise attack on a group of people who weren't well armed ce wit and who believed that they were at peace with the aggressing party. and so from bob's perspective, sand creek was a massacre. and that doesn't seem to have anything to do with whether or

not chivington's men committed atrocities in the aftermath of the slaughter. but i think you're asking in my view a more complicated questionbu because you said it's a memory question. in terms of the way that we hink i remember this tevent i think it's absolutely crucial that we understand chivington's to have committed these horrible acts. to have mutilated the corpses of arapahoe and cheyenne, especially women and children. and i don't want to get too -- that you'll note that my talk was t actually quite careful to stay away from some of these descriptions. but they're extraordinarily graphic. a pregnant woman eviscerated. and so those memories i think play a very very important role in how we understand this having been a massacre because they speak to the motivations of the soldiers there. and they suggest a kind of

thirst for vengeance, which might lead to a massacre.inia. >> richard griffin from alexandra, virginia. we're not -- weren't chivington and his men present at gore yet that pass? >> he was at glorietta pass at glo that's where hrie secured his reputation. he was promoted of his very likely honorable service at glorietta pass. historians look back and wonder at whether or not chivington may have inflated his importance. what ended up happening in the wake of glorietta pass he was promoted but his career stalled.r why he wanted to be a united states have senator, h he wanted to get in politics. so one of the explanations for why something like sand creek might have happened is

chivington had personal reasons he was trying to use the civil l war war as an engine of career ca mobility. lots of soldiers did this. and sand creek was kind of a last-ditch effort on his part toapitul recapitulate hisat heroics at glorietta pass. >> my name's lee fisher from oxford, ohio.this i i'm an older graduate student in anthropology anthropology. this is a national parks servicegs -- application, perhaps a resources question. you mentioned the early comancheell raids through texas and it's well documented by many historians that those same dep ra dayses were committed by the comanche on white people. the par does the park service have any intent, ever, to document that kind of activity on the part of native americans?am na and conversely turn that into the same kind of national park?

>> i mean, i'm sort of back to the same place that i was servi earlier where i can't speak to they exactly what the parks service ever is going to do. >> do you ever think they'd have the political courage to do that?ughs] >> what i would say is that at the sand creek site, there's actually a fair amount of documentation about what's known as the hunggate massacre, the he hunggate murders. pla this was a family that was slaughtered on the plains east not of denver. very likely by arapahoes although people don't know for certain. in the summer of 1864. these were native people who were not part of black kettle's bands, they were not camped at sand creek. but white authorities in colorado territory used the hunggate murders as a pretext o for drumming up some of the outrage that led to sand creek. so speaking to your question, the parks service does document oes

do what happened to the hunggates. the family was butchered.orpses w and then their corpses were brought to denver where they as were displayed. as to the broader question of whether or not there's going to be a national memorial or a y to t historic sitehe devoted specifically to the victims of native americans, i don't know the answer to that. i really don't. i mean i would say broadly mo speakingnu again that we have a number of monuments and memorials throughout the american west to white settlers. but not specifically to these sorts of atrocities. last one? this is the last question. >> cal mackay from mechanicsburg, pennsylvania. a question about how we categorize historical events. chivington's comments i think can be safely called self-serving.at asi that aside can we really event consider this to be an event of

the american civil war? the it may have happened in 1864 ar, bu during the years of the civil war, but really, was it that connected to the civil war? >> yes. >> and how so? >> again, as i mentioned war earlier, in my view the civil war is both a war of empire and also becomes a war of liberationf over time. that war of empire plays itself out in colorado territory and in the trans-mississippi west with of di a number of different native engagements, battles a massacres, other, with native american groups. because thmoe united states is going to move into the west. that's one of the cornerstones of the republican party's vision for the american people.

that the federal government will sponsor the move into the west. again, with the pacific railroad act, homestead act the moral land grant act and others. the department of agriculture, you can go on and on and on. p all of these are an outgrowth of the united states civil war.sed, a all of those pieces of legislation passed, at least in , beca significantus measure because southerners have absented themselves from the united states congress. and a again because the american people have voted republicans into office -- because the american people voted republicans into office in 1860. and so is sand creek part of thes an civil war? it's an outgrowth of the civil war, it's an outgrowth of the at same mechanisms and processes that birthed the civil war. but also it's an episode that soldie features civil war soldiers. united states volunteer soldiers on the federal payroll. soldiers who are mustered into the union army. and so again, i wasn't being

entirely glib when i said yes, i think it is. is it as central a part of the civil war story as some of the en otherts events that people are going to be talking about here't th no, i don't think it is. i don't want to overstate my m. claims. that's not the kind of historiannk it i am. is but i do think that it's a very,y and very important story and i think that it's worth telling. thank you all again very, very much. remind your children in this bicentennial year when we are the first generation of americans to have experienced attacks on the continental united states, we are the first generation of americans to have felt what it was like to have our government buildings attacked. remind your children that freedom is not free and that our country's greatness is found in one another. that's what the star-spangled banner is about.

that's what this commemoration year is about. to tell that story and to lift every voice and to sing. >> a three-day fourth of july weekend starts friday on american history tv, including the 200th anniversary of the star-spangled banner friday at 8:30 p.m. eastern. saturday night at 8:00 visit the college classroom of professor joel howell as he talks about u.s. government human radiation experiments conducted after world war ii through the cold war. and sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a preview of presidential historian jeffrey enangle's manuscript on george h.w. bush and the peaceful end to the cold war. daniel stein of the federation for immigration reform and benjamin johnson of the american immigration council discuss whether immigration to the u.s. hurts or helps the country. after that, charles murray of the american enterprise institute looks at american exceptionalism. plus your phone calls, facebook